This article provides an overview of important social and political contexts that underscore the need for an increased focus on the role of social justice in leadership education and development discourse. The article also discusses key misconceptions that inhibit critical conversations about leadership education and a leadership framework that designed to center social justice in leadership development efforts.
Chicana/Latina undergraduate students represent a significant and growing proportion of student enrollment in higher education institutions in the United States, particularly in states like California that have critical masses of Chicanx/Latinx communities. Despite their increasing enrollment rates, Chicana/Latina college students continue to experience racial/ethnic and gendered isolation, academic and culture shock, feelings of imposter syndrome, and a lack of belonging at the university. This article applied Anzaldúa's theoretical concept of nepantla to the college transition experiences of 18 Chicana/Latina mujeres who participated in a Summer Bridge program at a research-intensive, public 4-year university in Southern California. Through interview and focus group data, we found that Chicana/Latina students were constantly negotiating their racial and gendered identities with their new college student identities. The clash between their former realities and new realities positioned them as atravesadas within a university context that questioned their aptitude for higher education, which detrimentally impacted their perception of themselves as students. The fusing of their old and new realities led the Chicana/Latina students in our study to form a new, complex, and informed reality that emerged from their old and new worlds on their own terms and through their own understanding of collegiate success. Given these mujer-centered findings, this article challenges the linearity and assimilationist undertones of leading college transition frameworks and models that are unfit to explain the ongoing transition experiences of Chicanas/Latinas. Further, this article advances an understanding of the transition to college for Chicana/Latina students that is mujer-centered, multidimensional, and fluid.
1) the centrality of race and racism and their intersectionality with other forms of subordination, (2) the challenge to dominant ideology, (3) the commitment to social justice, (4) the centrality of experiential knowledge, and (5) the transdisciplinary perspective. 6 Additionally, to develop this counterstory I draw on my cultural intuition, 7 including my own 1 This counterstory models the intentional writing styles of Scholars of Color who capitalize terms such as "Communities of Color." Dra. Lindsay Pérez Huber, for example, argues that capitalizing these terms rejects the standard grammatical norm and moves toward empowerment and racial and social justice. The rule of capitalization will also apply to the terms "Scholars of Color," "People of Color," "Students of Color," and "Brown" throughout this counterstory.2 See Solorzano and Yosso ( 2001) for a discussion of storytelling in African American, Chicanx/Latinx, and Native American communities.3 See Solorzano and Yosso ( 2001) for a discussion of storytelling and counterstorytelling in the social sciences, humanities, law, and education.4 Anzaldúa (1990) argues that as People of Color, we must ". . . occupy theorizing space, that we not allow white men and women solely to occupy it. By bringing in our own approaches and methodologies, we transform that theorizing space" (xxv).Solorzano and Yosso ( 2001) argue that counterstorytelling is a methodological response to this call. I hope that my counterstory also answers this call by using the methodological tool of counterstorytelling to occupy theorizing space for and with rural Chicanx/Latinx students and families.5 I include both the terms "Chicana" and "Latina" to account for the varying racial, cultural, social, and political identities that collectively represent women who are from or have roots in Latin America. 6 See Solorzano (1997) for a discussion of the five tenets included in a Critical Race Theory (CRT) in Education framework. 7 Delgado Bernal (1998) theorizes cultural intuition as "the unique viewpoints Chicana scholars bring to the research process" (p. 2). She
Neoliberal ideologies function to transfer capitalist logics from the economic sector to all aspects of social and political life (Brown, 2006). Neoliberal logics include, but are not limited to, a hyperfocus on capital accumulation, beliefs in individualistic hyper-competition for capital as the primary means of advancing society and humanity, and the commodification of everything (e.g., education, knowledge, diversity, multiculturalism;Museus & LePeau, 2019). In response to the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s, the most privileged sects of society launched concerted efforts to infuse neoliberal logics throughout U.S. society in the mid-20th century (Ferguson, 2017). Many argue that this neoliberal turn since the 1970s has had profound effects on higher education, as well as the study of postsecondary systems.Ferguson (2017) explained how the neoliberal turn influenced social justice conversations in higher education over the last 50 years. He noted that it functioned to replace Civil Rights Movement agendas for the radical eradication of systemic oppression with conversations about diversity and multiculturalism. Other scholars have documented how higher education's increased focused on commodified forms of diversity and multiculturalism has come at the expense of more substantial systemic transformation during this period as well (Iverson, 2008). Higher education institutions and professionals increasingly viewed and framed education and diversity as commodities, of things that could enhance graduates' competitiveness in the workforce and their ability to advance the nation's standing in the global economy (Bok, 2009).It was within this historical context that the study of higher education took shape. In the latter half of the 20th century, researchers began studying college students ' trajectories, experiences, and outcomes (Museus, 2023). The focus was often on how to produce graduates prepared to contribute to the economic viability of the U.S. (Bok, 2009). In the late 20th Century, an increasing number of higher education scholars sought to challenge the invisibility of power, privilege, culture, and identity in many of these dominant discourses (e.g., Hurtado & Carter, 1997). They often called for more efforts to center the knowledge, values, and perspectives, of communities that faced significant systemic injustices.Conversations in the area leadership education and development also emerged within this historical context. For example, many early leadership theories focused on factors, such as leadership traits and leaders' relationships with and ability to influence their constituents (Dugan, 2017). Over the last few decades, scholars have made efforts to underscore the importance of leaders' social responsibility (Komives & Wagner, 2016). They have also argued that leadership should not be viewed as a transactional endeavor, but instead is inevitably a moral one (Dugan, 2017;MacGregor Burns, 2012). Many working in leadership education and development have invested extensive energy to include people f...
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